This incident took place during my second semester in nursing school, so I was VERY much still new at it. My clinical rotation this semester was on a trauma floor. The first day on the floor I had a patient that had some type of head trauma (can't remember now exactly what happened). I think he had been hit in the head with a bat or something. Anyway, he was confused and only spoke Spanish so communicating with him was not happening. He would become very violent quickly without warning (and had attempted to bite several other nurses...sometimes successfully, sometimes not successfully), so his arms and legs were restrained to the bed as a precaution. His injury was gang related and the police were investigating the altercation he was in...so for his protection, his name was not listed on anything. He went by X's. I didn't even know what his real name was. He was a pretty buff guy, very strong, and covered in tattoos. Thankfully, his wife was at his bedside at all times and could calm him down with just a touch to his arm. I will admit that when I went up to the floor the night before to read his chart I was skeptical. When I went home to prepare to take care of him the next day and dug deeper into his diagnosis, I became down right scared! This guy was a known gang member, was whacked on the head with something during a fight, the police were investigating, and no one even knew his real name in an attempt to protect him from another gang member coming into the hospital and finishing him off!! I did not sleep well that night. I went to clinical the next morning with a stomach FULL of butterflies. As I was riding up the elevator, I pushed all my fear aside and decided to do the best I could to take care of him that day. This is what I had decided to do with my life, and I couldn't let 1 patient scare me away from a career I knew I'd be good at. So, as I got off the elevator and met my instructor I was ready to take on whatever that day threw my way. The first thing my instructor did was pull me aside from the group and told me to be careful with my patient that day because he was already agitated and bit 3 people on the night shift. ....GREAT.... So much for swallowing that fear and standing up to it. I was completely freaked out. I tried to play it off, I prayed that I wouldn't get bit and that I would do the best I could that day. Everything turned out well. His wife helped immensely and I had NO problems out of him! My prayers had been answered and I had restored confidence that I could handle this. I had another student come in to help me give him his bath while his wife held his hands/legs down for us. I had worried and made myself sick over nothing.
Around lunch time, his wife asked me if I could sit in the room with him while she went downstairs to get something to eat. He was sleeping and I thought I could return her the favor of helping me with him so much that morning so I told her yes, it would be fine. I got his chart and all the paperwork I needed to work on to turn in at the end of the day and sat in his room while she went to eat. I had ok'd it with my instructor. She said it was fine, but said since he was so unpredictable she would like another student to sit in there with me in case anything happened. No problem. I found a friend that agreed to come in. She went to go get the chart on her patient to work on paperwork as well. While she was gone I looked over at the bedside table...something caught my eye. THERE WAS A GUN LYING ON IT!!! I started flipping out. I'm in a room with a guy from a gang, who is confused and violent, and THERE IS A GUN!! I yelled out my friends name from the door and she came running over (thinking we needed to restrain him or something). I am in panic mode at this point and I'm barely able to tell her what's wrong. She asked me what we should do. My patient was still asleep, so I asked her to stay there and watch him while I went to find the nurse I was paired with or my instructor. I found my instructor down the hall and told her I had an emergency. We go running back to the room and when we go in, there is a HUGE man standing there holding the gun. It was pointed at my friend, but he seemed to be just looking at it. He turned to look at us, turning the gun to point at us as well. I yell out, "Please don't shoot me!! I'm just a student and don't even know this guy!!" He started laughing and told us he was one of the interpreters for the hospital. My instructor asks why he pointed the gun at us. He said he didn't intentionally mean to do it. He came into the room while I had gone to find help and my friend pointed it out to him. He was examining it when we came back into the room and we thought he was holding up my friend. When he turned to us as we walked in he was going to tell us that it was only a TOY gun, but I started yelling at him to not shoot me before he got the chance.
About this time my patient's wife walks back in. The interpreter and her begin talking to each other in Spanish and it turns out that her little boy had been at the hospital the night before. She had brought the toy for him to play with to keep him occupied and out of trouble. The only problem was the orange tip that is on the end of toy guns had fallen off, so it had looked like a real gun. We explained to her what had happened and asked that she take it home with her the next time she went and to not bring it back. We all found it funny by the end of the semester, but my instructor could see the stress I had been through. She sent me home early that day, out of pity I'm sure. I went home and crashed...slept until the next morning!!
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